


At the Door

by onceandfuturekiki



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6295660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceandfuturekiki/pseuds/onceandfuturekiki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fight with Earthbreaker Groon, the group returns to the Slayer's Take to rest for the night. Some people end up at the doors to rooms that aren't theirs. Written during the brief hiatus, so now it's a sort of canon-divergent post-ep. A rough version of this story was posted on Tumblr, but this is a more complete, polished version.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kashaw wasn’t really sure what he was doing.

Dealing with people wasn’t something with which he was usually comfortable. Dealing with people when there were… romantic…  _things_ …involved, well… that wasn’t something with which he had really had any experience. At all.

Unless he counted Vesh, which… yeah, that was an all together _different_ thing.

_Normal_ romantic situations, where there were no gods involved… they were pretty much foreign to him.

So he wasn’t sure whether he should knock on Keyleth’s door or not.

Did she even want to see him right now? Would it be seen as a nice romantic gesture? Did he  _want_  to make a romantic gesture?

He felt a fool, standing there, staring at Keyleth’s door. At least it was the middle of the night and there weren’t people around to see him acting in such a ridiculous way.

Why couldn’t she have just stayed away? Things would have been so much simpler.

He never should have let Zahra talk him into this.

_For gods’ sake, Kash, be a fucking man and knock on the door_ , Kashaw chastised himself.

He continued to stand there, doing nothing.

Did he even want to? Would  _she_  even want him to?

It hadn’t been like last time. Last time, when she had been so clearly enamored and he had been so annoyed, but so surprisingly attracted to her. Last time, when despite his usual rudeness and gruffness she had become so obviously smitten. The sheen had clearly worn off, and just this once, he wished he was better with people so he could figure out exactly what was going on.

Taking a step back, Kashaw thought that maybe it would be better just to go back to his room and go to sleep. What would he even say to her if she did open the door? “Hey, so you’re not taking me being a complete ass as well as you did before. Why’s that?” Was he supposed to confess his undying love for her? Were his feelings even as ridiculous as that?

All Kashaw had right now were questions without answers. He hated not having the answers.

Damn it all, he was going to get some answers.

Once again, he stepped up to the door, raised his hand, and knocked lightly.

Oh, fuck, what had he done?

Considering the fact that she hadn’t seemed exactly happy to see him when he first walked into the guild hall, he didn’t think Keyleth would be thrilled to find him knocking on her door in the middle of the night, interrupting her sleep. And she hadn’t seemed thrilled with his reaction to her friends, either. Honestly, he hadn’t realized that he was being so outwardly  _annoyed_ , but… they were all so strange and  _intense_. And there were so many of them.

Sure, Keyleth was weird and annoying, too. But there was only one of her.

Of course, he figured Keyleth and the rest of Vox Machina were probably a package deal. That’s how he was starting to feel about Zahra, after all, and he hadn’t spent nearly as much time with her as Keyleth had with her little group of adventurers. So if he _did_ want Keyleth, he imagined that meant she’d come with five or six well-meaning but very irritating friends. That thought alone had soured his mood somewhat, which wasn’t helped by the bizarre and uncomfortable friendliness of said friends.

Also… there had been something else. Something that had only just prickled his senses, that he couldn’t figure out or put his finger on. He just knew that there was something _different_  and that he wasn’t sure what it was.

As he spent some time trying, and failing, to pinpoint exactly what that thing was, Kashaw realized he’d been standing in the same spot for a while, and Keyleth hadn’t yet opened the door.

Maybe he hadn’t knocked hard enough. Maybe she was asleep.

Should he knock again? If she  _was_  asleep, did he really want to wake her? Would she be angry if he did? He hadn’t even figured out what he wanted to say.

Fuck. He didn’t know how to do this.

Keyleth probably wouldn’t want to see him anyway. Sure, she had been nice at the tavern, but other than that…

The tavern. That was the first time he started getting that weird, prickly feeling that something was different. Things had seemed fine, and then the twins and the guy with glasses met up with them and things got weird.

Sure, it could have just been the fact that everyone was telling him how great he was, how attractive he was, how happy they were to have him on their side. That was absolutely not something to which he was accustomed. Kashaw knew he wasn’t a  _nice_ person, so it was rare that he had anyone singing his praises. And here he had  _multiple_ people doing it. It was… well, it was really fucking strange. It also made him extremely uncomfortable.

The twins in particular had made him feel both nervous and somewhat ill at ease. Vex had been all smiles and kind words, but her tone had seemed to contradict her outward display of friendliness. Kashaw wasn’t sure _why_ she would be antagonistic, considering the fact that they had only met that day. And Vax seemed determined to not just be nice, but to _praise_ him. Kashaw had thought that he might have been flirting, but the whole thing was so confusing, with his compliments, mixed with his sister’s aggressiveness, and the topic that he had started to broach, but for whatever reason had changed his mind. It had all been so bizarre and unlike anything he had every experienced, and he found himself more perplexed by the entire encounter than he had been by any social interaction of which he’d even been a part.

So he could have dismissed that weird prickling as just  _whatever the hell that was_. But he felt it again, after they met the Halfling, when Keyleth had seemed so insistent about not wanting to hurt anybody, without elaborating on why she seemed to want him to know that, and again after Vax, the big guy, and the little guy fought the monk. (It had seriously been the strangest fucking day).

No. Something was definitely going on with Keyleth, and he had no idea what it was.

It was just another question without an answer.

He really should have said no when they asked him to come along and help.

Angry with himself, with Keyleth, with Zahra for talking him into tagging along on this absurd quest, and with the entire situation, Kashaw lifted his fist and knocked again on the door, hard.

Shit. Well, he probably had woken her, along with the rest of the people in the rooms around him.

Still, the door didn’t open.

Fine. Maybe she just didn’t want to talk to him. That was fine. It wasn’t like he had any idea what he would say to her anyway, outside of “what the fuck is going on?” It was probably better this way. They’d see each other in the morning, and right now he could go back to his room and figure out exactly what he was going to say.

His feet remained glued to the spot.

Well, maybe he’d knock one more time.


	2. Chapter 2

_I really hope that I’m not being as loud as I feel like I am_ , Vex thought to herself as she crept down the hallway. She was trying so hard to be quiet, so as not to wake anyone, but every footstep she made hit her ears like it was a whip hitting solid steel.

She wasn’t doing anything wrong. It wasn’t like she was afraid of getting  _caught_. She just didn’t want to wake anybody in the middle of the night.

And she  _certainly_ wasn’t embarrassed by the fact that she was so worried about her brother that she was creeping toward his room in the middle of the night to check on him. It’s not like watching him fighting in that pit and not being able to help him had filled her with so much fear and worry that she found herself unable to sleep, instead using the night to skulk through the hallways of the guild house so she could make sure that he had not been too badly injured.

Finally reaching the door after what seemed like hours of creeping down hallways, Vex took a moment to catch her breath, only just realizing that she had been holding it through most of her journey, before lightly tapping at the door. After several moments passed with no answer, she rapped her knuckles against the door once more, slightly harder. She didn’t want to wake him if he was asleep, but she wanted to make sure he heard her if he wasn’t.

Several more moments of silence passed, and Vex reached the conclusion that her brother was probably asleep. She almost turned around to creep back to her room, but she couldn’t take that first step back into the hallway. Even if Vax was asleep, she felt like she couldn’t sleep herself until she had seen him with her own two eyes.

Vex pushed the door open slowly, hoping it wouldn’t creek. If Vax  _was_  asleep, she didn’t want to wake him up. She just wanted to check on him, make sure he was okay, that his wounds were healing. That he was breathing.

Never in a million years would she admit to how much she fretted over him.

When the space between the door and the frame was  _just_  wide enough to slip her body through, she entered the room swiftly, pushing the door back behind her, but not closing it entirely. The room was completely dark, much darker than the hallway had been, and it took her eyes some time to adjust to it.

The bed was set up almost directly opposite of the door, with the foot of the bed, Vex judged, resting about eight feet away from the entrance. As she walked in to the room, careful not to make any noise, her eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, and she could make out Vax’s outline on the bed, under the covers. He was lying on his back, propped up slightly on a small pile of pillows. And he was most definitely breathing.

Seeing her brother’s chest steadily moving up and down with each breath, Vex let out an involuntary breath of relief, and after the sound escaped her mouth she noticed movement to Vax’s side. At first she thought it was just his arm under the covers, but as her eyes finally adjusted completely to the darkness of the room, she realized whatever was lying next to her brother was far bigger than an arm.

Her feet were silent as they took a few more steps toward the bed. As she came up closer she noticed the red hair that started next to Vax’ cheek and flowed back over the pillow, over the arm that her brother had wrapped around what she now realized was Keyleth.

A stunned “huh” was all her mind could muster.

Keyleth seemed to be fully clothed, thank the gods. Vex could see the straps of her white nightgown where her pale shoulders peeked out from beneath the blankets. Vax, however, was shirtless, the few external wounds he had suffered in the fight freshly dressed.

She couldn’t wrap her head around it, the way they were lying there together so still, their arms wrapped around each other, sleeping peacefully. Earlier that very day Vex had been  _sure_  that Keyleth was flirting with that pretty boy Cleric, and she  _knew_  they had had some kind of personal chat on the road after picking up Kima. But now Keyleth was in here, sharing a bed with Vax. Her cheek rested on his shoulder, with her forehead pressed against his jaw, and she had one arm draped over him, her hand resting over his heart, with her other arm tucked between them and wrapped around her stomach, where her other hand was joined with the hand at the end of the arm that Vax had wrapped around her.  _This didn’t make sense_.

Of course, Keyleth had displayed quite the reaction when the fight was over. Vex was fairly certain that she had never actually seen Keyleth kiss anyone of her own volition. She also knew that Kashaw had been her first kiss, which meant that Vax kissing her in Whitestone was only her second. So unless Keyleth had been doing some more kissing of which she was unaware, this had only been her third kiss. And the first one  _she_  had initiated.

Maybe there  _had_  been other kissing, though. Vex realized that she really knew so little about what had been going on between her brother and the druid. Vax was so reluctant to talk about any of it with her, and Keyleth certainly wasn’t telling her anything. Maybe more had happened than she’d realized?

If only Vax would _talk_ to her about this. She knew that she had been… _snippy_ about the whole thing initially, but she had just needed some time to get used to it. Plus, he had obviously had these feelings for Keyleth long before anyone was aware of them, so it was going on, for him at least, well before her protective and possessive side had reared its ugly head. And he’d kept all of it from her. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons she had taken so poorly to the whole thing. She didn’t like not knowing what was going on with her brother. She didn’t like it when he kept things from her. This was a big thing to shut her out of completely.

Movement from the bed cut off her thoughts. Her instincts taking over, Vex quickly moved back into the shadows, praying that she wouldn’t be caught.

Keyleth shifted, the hand pressed to Vax’s heart moving down to grip at his side as she moved closer to him, her face turning to bury itself in the crook of his neck. As though he was attuned to every movement she made, Vax turned into her slightly, pressing his lips to her forehead. “You alright?” he mumbled, clearly still mostly asleep.

“Mmm,” Keyleth sleepily responded. “Cold.”

Vex watched as Vax took the arm not wrapped around Keyleth and pulled the blankets up over her shoulders. Keyleth, her eyes still closed, tilted her head up slightly to press a kiss to his jaw, then settled back down against him as they both went back to sleep.

There was a big piece of the puzzle that Vex knew she was missing.

But she wasn’t going to get it here, staring at her brother and her friend while they slept.  

As she backed out of the room and closed the door behind her, praying to all the gods who might be listening that she’d managed to do so silently, Vex’s thoughts were a jumble. She probably shouldn’t have been so openly hostile to Keyleth earlier in the day. Though, really, Keyleth didn’t seem to understand that she  _was_  being openly hostile. But maybe she shouldn’t have been so openly hostile the past few months, ever since she realized what Vax felt. She had thought she understood what had been happening, but realized now, after witnessing what she had just seen, that she had never really had any idea what was going on between the two of them. She still didn’t really. Except that maybe they finally seemed to have reached an understanding.

Vex hoped that was the case. She’d hate to have to put an arrow through Keyleth for breaking her brother’s heart.


	3. Chapter 3

Kashaw was exhausted. After spending what he considered to be a shameful amount of time at Keyleth’s door the night before, he had returned to his own room and gotten into bed, only to toss and turn with indecision.

It was early in the morning, earlier than most people would be awake. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. After a night of hardly any sleep, he’d decided to get an early start on the day.

That early start had ended up being him roaming the halls, still lost in thought.

Kashaw didn’t like having so many questions without having any answers. When it came to Keyleth he felt like he was completely in the dark, and that was a place he did not like being. The thought that perhaps he could talk to Zahra about it had crossed his mind more than once since the previous night. She was better at things like this than he was. At the very least, she could talk to people without pissing them off and hurting their feelings. And she knew that he was interested in Keyleth, so it wouldn’t be like he was revealing some big secret to her. He would just be asking for advice.

On a personal, romantic matter.

Fuck.

He wished that the universe would just give him an answer, tell him what to do so that this could just _ end _ .

The sound of a door opening stopped his thoughts.

He kind of hated himself for how quickly he darted to hide behind the wall when he saw that it was Keyleth who had opened the door.

She stood there in the doorway, looking from side to side, as though she was trying to make sure there was nobody else in the hallway, that nobody would see her. Her long red hair was messy, mussed from sleep, and her long white nightgown hung off her frame from two think straps at her shoulders.

Gods, she was beautiful. There were a lot of things Kashaw was unsure of when it came to Keyleth, but that wasn’t one of them.

It suddenly hit him that the door Keyleth was now standing in was not the door he was knocking on last night.

Well, that was why she didn’t answer. He had knocked on the wrong door. He had gotten agitated for nothing.

He _ really _ hoped the door he had spent an embarrassing 25 minutes intermittently knocking on hadn’t had anyone on the other side. Right now the mortification was blessedly personal and private. For it to become public would be… unpleasant.

Maybe seeing her this morning like this was a sign. A sign that he needed to talk to her.  _ Right now _ . He still didn’t know what to say, but he knew he had to say something. The way they had left things yesterday hadn’t been great, and he wanted to at least get the day off on the right foot with her.

Before Kashaw could move forward, he saw a hand reach out from the other side of the door, grasping Keyleth’s. As she turned around, Vax came into view, smiling down at her as he laced their fingers together. His lips moved as a he said… _ something _ to Keyleth, and Kashaw found himself wishing that he could read lips like Vax’s twin could. He couldn’t see Keyleth’s face to see her reaction to Vax’s words, but the way she leaned up to kiss him, still grasping his hand, gave a pretty clear indication. Vax leaned down to meet her, their lips pressing together in a slow, lingering meeting. His free hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheekbone as Keyleth moved closer to him.

Kashaw watched as the half-elves kissed, feeling the pieces click into place. The _ thing  _ that he had felt the day before but couldn’t figure out. The prickly feeling he’d had at the tavern, after the fight. The way Vax had been acting, the thing he had started to say but didn’t, the way Keyleth had talked about not wanting to hurt anybody. It was this. It was… them. They were… _ this _ .

To Kashaw, it felt like the kiss went on forever. He watched, knowing he should probably look away, as their lips moved together. Finally they separated, their foreheads pressing together. He didn’t have to have Vex’s talents to know the words Vax’s mouth formed next.

_ I love you _ .

Unable to see her face, Kashaw couldn’t know what Keyleth said back. But given the way Vax’s smile grew, brighter than he had ever seen on the usually brooding half-elf’s face, he could make a pretty good guess.

Vax dropped Keyleth’s hand, both of his arms winding around her waist to pull her close as he kissed her again. Keyleth’s hands went first to his cheeks before she brought them around his neck, doing her part to press their bodies as close together as possible.

If he was a better man, Kashaw would have walked away then. Hell, if he was a better man he would have walked away as soon as he saw Vax in the room behind Keyleth. He wasn’t a better man, so he stood and watched as the woman he thought he could maybe one day love kissed another man.

Could he even really be mad? He had kissed her, without her permission, and had walked away without a word. That hardly meant that he had any kind of a claim on her. And honestly, he wasn’t even sure he wanted her. For all her beauty, all her kindness, there were still the things that irritated him, the things that made her, as he had said before he kissed her, the most annoying person he had ever met. Besides, he was married to a god. Did he really think that he’d just be able to have Keyleth and that everything would be fine?

He wasn’t even sure that anger was what he was feeling. It was more… disappointment. Disappointment at not getting to find out.

Really, he realized, he wasn’t even the one who should be angry here. Vax and Keyleth were… _ this _ now. They were _ together _ , whatever that meant. And while Kashaw and Keyleth hadn’t been overly affectionate or anything, they had been rather _ cozy _ at the tavern, and they’d had their little quiet, private conversation on the road. Considering the fact that the last time either Vax or Keyleth had seen him he was kissing Keyleth and walking away, Vax would have had every right to be pissed at him right now. Kashaw knew that he wasn’t exactly subtle about, at the very least, his physical attraction to Keyleth, and he hadn’t exactly kept his interest to himself.

But Vax had been so… _ nice _ . He’d been so complimentary and friendly. And sure, he was pretty bad at reading people, but it had seemed pretty honest and genuine. It was _ Vex  _ whose friendliness had seemed more threatening, which admittedly made far more sense now than it had the day before. Vax was just…

He was nice.

That was a man who was confident in his relationship.

At the door, their lips separated again. Keyleth and Vax held onto each other for a long moment, gazing at each other in a way that someone like the dwarf could probably describe in a poetic way. He could see Vax looking at her, his eyes practically spilling over with adoration in a way that Kashaw hadn’t thought happened outside of stories. Really, for two people who seemed like they were trying to sneak around without anyone seeing them or finding out about them, they were spending an awful lot of time putting their relationship on full display in the hallway.

Vax leaned down for one more quick kiss before letting go slowly, like it was the last thing he wanted to do. It happened in stages, first bringing his hands around from her back to grasp at her waist. Keyleth started backing up without turning away from Vax completely, her hand running from his shoulder, down his arm, and into his hand. The hand at her waist and moved up to her shoulder before running down her arm and taking her other hand. She took a few more steps back, holding on to his hands for as long as she could, before she finally turned away.

Kashaw moved back behind the wall quickly, not wanting to be caught spying on such an intimate moment. But in that small second that he had seen Keyleth after she’d turned around, he’d seen the smile on her face.

She looked happy.

Vax looked pretty fucking happy, too.

They were happy together. They were _ in love _ .

Honestly, he wasn’t sure he had that kind of thing in him. The way Vax had looked at her, the way he’d held her… Kashaw wasn’t sure that he’d be able to give her that, even if he was free to do so. That just wasn’t who he was. He didn’t look at people like they were some kind of beautiful metaphor or hold them like he never wanted to let go. Despite his attraction to Keyleth, he’d never had anything resembling those kind of thoughts about her. That just wasn’t him. 

He peeked around the wall one last time. Keyleth had made it to the end of the hallway, where she was opening her door. Her head lifted one last time, like she couldn’t help herself, and she looked back down the hall, where Vax still stood, watching her, with eyes that practically had hearts pouring out of them. A small, secret smile crossed her face before she stepped into her room, closing the door behind her. Vax continued watching for another moment before turning back into his room, the door shutting silently.

_ Yeah _ , Kashaw thought. _ That’s _ _ definitely not me _ .

He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he couldn’t give Keyleth what she deserved. He couldn’t give her what Vax could.

At least now this ridiculousness could stop. No more knocking at the doors to rooms that were actually empty, no more sleepless nights doubting himself. Now he could focus on the matter at hand: killing some dragons.

That would feel _ really _ good.

Keyleth was happy and he was going to kill some dragons.

Maybe that was enough.

THE END


End file.
